Our New Model Robot ArmiesBy Peter Layton, Small Wars Journal: “Robotic technologies seem set to disrupt warfare in at least two big ways: firstly, in improving productivity making armies equipment-centric; and secondly, in making defence dominant on the battlefield. In this revolution, the character of war will change and somewhat unexpectedly, possibly its nature.”​

Readying the Naval Services for What’s Over the Horizon By Robert P. Kozloski, CHIPS: “Experts claim that society is at the verge of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. This change presents both challenges and opportunities for the Department of the Navy, where warfighting considerations are rightfully privileged. The management aspects of technology are only a secondary consideration, but may have enormous consequences if they are not addressed.”
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Pentagon Hopes JEDI Contract Good for the Force By Colin Clark, Breaking Defense: “Worth up to $10 billion over a decade, the Pentagon’s attempt to build its first true enterprise-wide cloud has sparked charges that the deal is designed to go straight to Amazon, who already supplies the CIA with its cloud services.

Army to Acquire New Nano Drones By Sonja Jordan, National Defense Magazine: “Soldiers are “looking for a covert, safe and immediately available situational awareness tool” that they can carry easily and use at the squad level, Aguirre said.

SOCOM 'Iron Man Suit' Prototype by 2019 By Vivienne Machi, National Defense Magazine: ““We think the risk is worth the reward in terms of what we can do to improve the survivability of the individual operator.”

China’s Play for Military Bases in the Eastern Indian OceanBy David Brewster, the interpreter: “Indeed, the development of a Chinese naval and air base on Gan or elsewhere in the Maldives would be a game changer in the Indian Ocean, potentially threatening the U.S. military presence at Diego Garcia.”

China's Missiles in the South China Sea: A Threat of WarBy Robert E. McCoy, Asia Times: “The South China Sea China has the potential to become a cauldron of conflict, and China is stoking the fire. By claiming perhaps as much as 90% of the South China Sea, Beijing is trampling on the rights of other nations in the region, nations whose Exclusion Economic Zones (EEZs) and national waters are being violated.”

Tactics and the Human Factor By Connor Love & Jeff Hubler, Modern War Institute: “Gen. Robert Brown, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, echoed this sentiment in his 2014 Human Dimension white paper: “Material solutions alone will not provide the decisive edge against the complex array of rapidly adapting threats we face.” However, here we are, four years later, with no major changes in the way we develop, train, or enhance the cognitive and social abilities of our soldiers.”

Todd Probert writes: In order to fully connect and integrate the future force, the U.S. military must accelerate the adoption of autonomy, machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the speed at which data is processed, information distributed and warfighting decisions made. - Defense One

Artificial Intelligence: Welcome to the Age of Disruptive Surprise By Bruce E. Pease, The Cipher Brief: “I spent a career in intelligence learning the business of forecasting and warning, and I teach those things today. I learned that warning is easier than forecasting—usually, you warn of vulnerabilities and possibilities, but you forecast likelihoods.”

China Is Mining Data Directly From Workers' & Soldiers' Brains By Stephen Chen, SCMP: “Concealed in regular safety helmets or uniform hats, these lightweight, wireless sensors constantly monitor the wearer’s brainwaves and stream the data to computers that use artificial intelligence algorithms to detect emotional spikes such as depression, anxiety or rage.”

DARPA Chooses Teams for $1.5B Electronics Initiative​By Yasmin Tadjdeh, National Defense Magazine: “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has chosen a multitude of industry and academic teams to work on six programs under its lucrative Electronics Resurgence Initiative that includes upwards of $1.5 billion in funding over five years.”

The Next War: The Growing Danger of Great-power ConflictFrom The Economist: “IN THE past 25 years war has claimed too many lives. Yet even as civil and religious strife have raged in Syria, central Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, a devastating clash between the world's great powers has remained almost unimaginable. No longer."

Planning for a multi-domain battle is how the U.S. military will keep its superiority but doing so requires a new mindset in the Pentagon and out in the field, said the Air Force’s air combat commander. - USNI News

Multi-Domain Operations: The Case of British Field Marshal William Slim By James D. Campbell, Strategy Bridge: “One of the most fruitful sources for examples illustrating the concepts behind multi-domain warfare is the World War II campaign history of the British Commonwealth 14th Army’s approach to combined operations within the Allied Southeast Asia Command in the China-Burma-India Theater.”

Accelerating Multi-Domain Operations: Evolution of an IdeaBy Stephen Townsend, Modern War Institute: “Multi-Domain Battle has a clear origin. Stemming from the idea that disruptive technologies will change the character of warfare, it recognizes that the way armies will fight and win wars will also change.

Drones in Counterterrorism: The Primacy of Politics Over Technology By Asfandyar Mir, Strategy Bridge: “Even President Barack Obama –– whose Presidency was marked by a prolific use of drones for counterterrorism –– recognized drone use as “what looks like a pretty antiseptic way of disposing of [our] enemies” while also expressing concerns that, without sufficient Congressional oversight, “you [could] end up with a president who can carry on perpetual wars all over the world.””

Taking 'Team of Teams' to the Contested LittoralsBy Jeffrey Cummings, Scott Cuomo, et al., War on the Rocks: “As success or failure relates to the future of unmanned systems, autonomy, and artificial intelligence, the Corps has one option if the former remains the goal: move out rapidly — eyes wide open — to responsibly make manned-unmanned teaming actual throughout our MAGTFs.”

The Strategic Implications of Non-State #WarBots By Mark Jacobsen, Strategy Bridge: “Over the past year, a primitive type of WarBot has become a formidable battlefield weapon: the small unmanned aerial system. The threat materialized in October 2016 when a drone booby-trapped by the Islamic State killed two Kurdish soldiers. Within a few months, the Islamic State was flying tens of aerial bombardment missions each day, displayed the capability to drop grenades down the hatches of tanks, and reportedly flew up to a dozen aircraft at a time. The threat was so severe that the Mosul offensive nearly stalled.”

Fuzzy Thinking About Drones​By Jon Askonas & Colby Howard, War on the Rocks: “Initial operational test and evaluation, or IOT&E — the last milestone before full-rate production starts — won’t be able to begin until late 2018.”

The Next Revolution In Military Affairs: MDC2By Daniel Gouré, RealClearDefense: “A still new RMA could be imminent. It is a function, first and foremost, of the proliferation of sensors and so-called smart devices, the creation of increasingly large, complex and sophisticated information networks, and growing potential in automated systems and artificial intelligence.”

U.S. Third Offset Has Profound Implications for Indo-Pacific By Brendan Thomas-Noone, The Strategist (ASPI): “As Washington concentrated on fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Beijing (and Moscow) invested in advanced missile technology, satellites, intelligence and reconnaissance assets, and networking capabilities. That has allowed China and Russia to employ anti-access and area denial (A2AD) strategies that have raised the cost and risk to the U.S. if it decides to intervene in a conflict close to those countries’ borders.”​

How America Can Build a Durable Military Balance in AsiaBy Michael Beckley, the interpreter: “This skewed media coverage is only the most recent example of what I call 'bilateral bias': the tendency of American observers to view China’s neighbours as passive dominoes or, at best, feckless pawns in a U.S.-China contest for regional supremacy.”

Integrating Multi-domain Battle with National Security By Albert Palazzo, Strategy Bridge: “To achieve the full potential of the information era, Multi-Domain Battle must become more than just a concept for fighting that is owned by the military. Combat divorced from greater purpose, from a political end and from strategy, generally results in defeat.”

Mission Command and Multi-Domain Battle Don’t MixBy Conrad Crane, War on the Rocks: “The emerging doctrine of AirLand Battle would stress agility and initiative as key operational concepts, but also included synchronization, the requirement to carefully coordinate all activities on the battlefield and achieve “unity of effort throughout the force.”” ​

Overkill: Army Mission CommandBy John Bolton, Small Wars Journal: “Mission Command will fail if not fully embraced and understood. Education can only partly address this problem as the systems used by Soldiers implicitly affects their actions.” ​

The Air Force's 'Bait and Switch' on J-STARS Recap By Daniel Goure, The Natoinal Interest: “The U.S. military has no sooner unveiled its shiny new operating concept for future joint warfare, called Multi-Domain Battle (MDB), then the wheels seem to be falling off their new, all-purpose construct.”

Multi-Domain Battle: The Echo of the Past By Albert Palazzo, Strategy Bridge: “The current military leadership in the U.S. knows that if the United States is to succeed in its future wars it must find the means to reclaim its previous battlefield dominance. Its potential adversaries have adapted and implemented countervailing capabilities to negate U.S. advantages, especially its ability to project and maneuver force globally.”

The Multi-Domain Threat to American Civil Infrastructure By Kyle Borne, Small Wars Journal: “The concept of Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) recognizes the fundamental shift in how potential adversaries of the United States engage in geostrategic means with which to achieve geopolitical goals via means below-armed-conflict.”

A Radical Pick for the National Security Council// Peter BeinartJohn Bolton's new chief of staff comes from the Center for Security Policy, a group that was largely shunned by conservatives in Washington—but is making a comeback in the Trump era.

Believing Is Seeing: On Strategic Imagination By Andrew A. Hill & Douglas Douds, War Room: “American national security strategy is generally unimaginative. It is too often constrained by a rigid, unimaginative pursuit of optimal objectives… It needs the constructive, creative impulse that characterizes great strategy.”​

In his six months as Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly often described the White House as one of the most dysfunctional organizations he had ever seen, complained to colleagues and allies about its meddling, incompetence and recklessness, and was once so angry he briefly considered quitting. Now as President Trump’s chief of staff, he is doing something about it — with a suddenness and force that have upended the West Wing. – New York TimesWhen new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: bad information getting into the president’s hands. Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him — whether on paper or in briefings — because the president would make better decisions if given good information. - PoliticoNSCNational security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has waged a pitched battle with other senior staff for control over policy and personnel on the National Security Council, is taking advantage of the shield offered by the arrival of his old military colleague John Kelly as White House chief of staff. - PoliticoEmpowered by a new chief of staff and goosed by a president angry over a lack of progress, National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster is sweeping out some of the White House’s most fervent ideologues and Trump loyalists. But McMaster has to move fast, senior administration officials tell The Daily Beast. – The Daily BeastAfter a protracted battle between the White House and the CIA over candidates, President Donald Trump has hired a career CIA analyst to become his senior director for Africa, two people familiar with the matter told BuzzFeed News. – Buzz FeedJames Kitfield writes: Taken as a group, Trump’s generals have tended to see their mission as twofold: The first job is to correct what senior military officers see as the mistakes of the Obama administration, a hesitancy to use force or commit troops that many allies perceived as a retreat from traditional U.S. commitments in the world. The second job—and the far riskier one—is to mitigate the damage caused by their boss. – Politico

McMaster Goes to War—Against His White House EnemiesBy Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng, & Kimberly Dozier, The Daily Beast: “The national security adviser is purging the Trump White House of hardliners. But the ‘nationalists’ are quickly moving to strike back.”

5 Reasons H.R. McMaster Is the Right Leader for a Tough PresidentBy Jim Carafano, Walter Lohman, Tom Spoehr, Luke Coffey, David Sheddand Nile Gardiner, The Daily Signal: “In national security adviser H.R. McMaster, the president has a leader of the National Security Council who has made a career of fighting for national security interests that involve very real sacrifice.”

McMaster Reshuffles National Security Council ByShane Savitsky, Axios: “Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the NSC, was shown the door yesterday by McMaster, who, according to a White House official, decided that "a different set of experiences is best-suited to carrying that work forward."”

Reforming the U.S. National Security EnterpriseBy Phillip Breton, Michael Gaffney, Michael Langan, and Amanda Werkheiser, Strategy Bridge: “The national security enterprise needs modernization. Traditional challenges from nation-states, non-state actors and trans-regional or multi-domain threats can disrupt U.S. national interests and global peace. Dealing with these challenges requires the application of all instruments of national power to achieve U.S. national security goals. No single element of national power can comprehensively address global challenges for the U.S., nor can a single U.S. government department or agency meet those challenges alone.”